Eugene, OR | 2008/10/27-day46
補正前
こういう作業は楽しいんだけど、時間があっという間に過ぎてしまう。
2009/02/26
Photoshop CS4
Photoshop CS4、Adobe Acrobat 9 Standardをインストールしていた。
PhotoshopはCS2からのアップグレード。
CS2は僕のカメラのRAW画像に対応してなくて、かなり不便だったのだけれど我慢していたのだ。ようやくCS4が発表されたので、旅の写真をプリント作業を目指して購入した次第。撮影時にはこのblog用に加工せずに、そのまま載せられる小さなサイズのjpgと、プリント用のRAW画像を同時に記録していた。
管理ソフトはOlympus Studio。今まではこれでRaw現像していた（レンズの歪み補正も）。Lightroom 1もあるのだけれど、どこか感覚が合わなくて使っていないし、アップグレードする予定もない。
今回、Acrobatのアップグレード版も同時に購入したのだけど、先にこっちをインストールしてユーザ登録したら、確認で届いたemailにアドビストアでの5%割引特典がついていた。もし別々に（＋Acrobatを先に）買ってたら、CS4が少し安くなったのに・・・ちょっと残念。しかも特典は３つ並んでいたのだが、よく見たら小さな字で、そのうち１つだけ選べとのこと。無駄に「次回5%引」のを押してしまったので、日本語フォントの無償ダウンロード特典が選択できなくなってしまった・・・さらに残念。
その他、Turbotax 等もインストールした。今年もTAX申請の季節だ（いつもギリギリだけど）。
それにしても旅を終えて３ヶ月が経つというのに、まだ旅行ネタを続けている。・・・・というよりも、まだまだ載せてない（整理出来てない）写真や話が沢山残っている。
PhotoshopはCS2からのアップグレード。
CS2は僕のカメラのRAW画像に対応してなくて、かなり不便だったのだけれど我慢していたのだ。ようやくCS4が発表されたので、旅の写真をプリント作業を目指して購入した次第。撮影時にはこのblog用に加工せずに、そのまま載せられる小さなサイズのjpgと、プリント用のRAW画像を同時に記録していた。
管理ソフトはOlympus Studio。今まではこれでRaw現像していた（レンズの歪み補正も）。Lightroom 1もあるのだけれど、どこか感覚が合わなくて使っていないし、アップグレードする予定もない。
今回、Acrobatのアップグレード版も同時に購入したのだけど、先にこっちをインストールしてユーザ登録したら、確認で届いたemailにアドビストアでの5%割引特典がついていた。もし別々に（＋Acrobatを先に）買ってたら、CS4が少し安くなったのに・・・ちょっと残念。しかも特典は３つ並んでいたのだが、よく見たら小さな字で、そのうち１つだけ選べとのこと。無駄に「次回5%引」のを押してしまったので、日本語フォントの無償ダウンロード特典が選択できなくなってしまった・・・さらに残念。
その他、Turbotax 等もインストールした。今年もTAX申請の季節だ（いつもギリギリだけど）。
それにしても旅を終えて３ヶ月が経つというのに、まだ旅行ネタを続けている。・・・・というよりも、まだまだ載せてない（整理出来てない）写真や話が沢山残っている。
ラベル:
*d-List
2009/02/21
The Jack Rabbit Trading Post
Joseph City, AZ | 2008/09/26-day15
実のところThe Jack Rabbit Trading Postはただの「お土産屋さん」なのだが、その看板は多分ルート66沿いで一番有名だ。
当時、あの特徴あるジャックラビットのシルエット＋赤で大きく「ＸＸマイル」等と書かれたシンプルな黄色い看板が遥か遠くから立っていたらしい。特に何の説明もないまま看板は、ルート66 （I-40）を進むにしたがって、90マイル、69マイル、45マイル等とカウントダウンしていき、10マイル、5マイル・・と興味を煽ったところで・・・
「HERE IT IS」（ここだよ！） と店の前に辿り着くのだった。
そして、ちゃんと、巨大なジャックラビットが居る。
登って記念写真を撮ったりするのだ。
ルート66関連だけでなく、インディアン居住区が近いので民芸品等も売っているのだが、主役は看板のデザインを元にしたジャックラビット・グッズ。店の看板が主力商品のキャラクターになるというのも、珍しいかもしれないな。
店の横にはサンタフェ鉄道が走っているのだけど、線路の枕木を固定する「巨大な釘」が店の片隅にゴロゴロと転がっていた。オーナー曰く、鉄道関係者が中古の釘を置いていくのだとういう。一本１ドルだというので、その半ば錆びたサンタフェ鉄道の釘を記念に買った。
実のところThe Jack Rabbit Trading Postはただの「お土産屋さん」なのだが、その看板は多分ルート66沿いで一番有名だ。
当時、あの特徴あるジャックラビットのシルエット＋赤で大きく「ＸＸマイル」等と書かれたシンプルな黄色い看板が遥か遠くから立っていたらしい。特に何の説明もないまま看板は、ルート66 （I-40）を進むにしたがって、90マイル、69マイル、45マイル等とカウントダウンしていき、10マイル、5マイル・・と興味を煽ったところで・・・
「HERE IT IS」（ここだよ！） と店の前に辿り着くのだった。
そして、ちゃんと、巨大なジャックラビットが居る。
登って記念写真を撮ったりするのだ。
ルート66関連だけでなく、インディアン居住区が近いので民芸品等も売っているのだが、主役は看板のデザインを元にしたジャックラビット・グッズ。店の看板が主力商品のキャラクターになるというのも、珍しいかもしれないな。
店の横にはサンタフェ鉄道が走っているのだけど、線路の枕木を固定する「巨大な釘」が店の片隅にゴロゴロと転がっていた。オーナー曰く、鉄道関係者が中古の釘を置いていくのだとういう。一本１ドルだというので、その半ば錆びたサンタフェ鉄道の釘を記念に買った。
2009/02/20
HERE IT IS
Joseph City, AZ | 2008/09/26-day15
The Jack Rabbit Trading Post,
Route 66 and Arizona's most famous Trading Post.
www.jackrabbit-tradingpost.com
ルート66の名物看板
The Jack Rabbit Trading Post,
Route 66 and Arizona's most famous Trading Post.
www.jackrabbit-tradingpost.com
ルート66の名物看板
2009/02/17
Always on the side of the egg
村上春樹、イスラエルの文学賞「エルサレム賞」授賞式でのスピーチ。
表面的な報道が多かったので、原文に近いと思われるものを探してみた。
-------------
Always on the side of the egg
By Haruki Murakami
Feb 15, 2009
I have come to Jerusalem today as a novelist, which is to say as a professional spinner of lies.
Of course, novelists are not the only ones who tell lies. Politicians do it, too, as we all know. Diplomats and military men tell their own kinds of lies on occasion, as do used car salesmen, butchers and builders. The lies of novelists differ from others, however, in that no one criticizes the novelist as immoral for telling them. Indeed, the bigger and better his lies and the more ingeniously he creates them, the more he is likely to be praised by the public and the critics. Why should that be?
My answer would be this: Namely, that by telling skillful lies - which is to say, by making up fictions that appear to be true - the novelist can bring a truth out to a new location and shine a new light on it. In most cases, it is virtually impossible to grasp a truth in its original form and depict it accurately. This is why we try to grab its tail by luring the truth from its hiding place, transferring it to a fictional location, and replacing it with a fictional form. In order to accomplish this, however, we first have to clarify where the truth lies within us. This is an important qualification for making up good lies.
Today, however, I have no intention of lying. I will try to be as honest as I can. There are a few days in the year when I do not engage in telling lies, and today happens to be one of them.
So let me tell you the truth. A fair number of people advised me not to come here to accept the Jerusalem Prize. Some even warned me they would instigate a boycott of my books if I came.
The reason for this, of course, was the fierce battle that was raging in Gaza. The UN reported that more than a thousand people had lost their lives in the blockaded Gaza City, many of them unarmed citizens - children and old people.
Any number of times after receiving notice of the award, I asked myself whether traveling to Israel at a time like this and accepting a literary prize was the proper thing to do, whether this would create the impression that I supported one side in the conflict, that I endorsed the policies of a nation that chose to unleash its overwhelming military power. This is an impression, of course, that I would not wish to give. I do not approve of any war, and I do not support any nation. Neither, of course, do I wish to see my books subjected to a boycott.
Finally, however, after careful consideration, I made up my mind to come here. One reason for my decision was that all too many people advised me not to do it. Perhaps, like many other novelists, I tend to do the exact opposite of what I am told. If people are telling me - and especially if they are warning me - "don't go there," "don't do that," I tend to want to "go there" and "do that." It's in my nature, you might say, as a novelist. Novelists are a special breed. They cannot genuinely trust anything they have not seen with their own eyes or touched with their own hands.
And that is why I am here. I chose to come here rather than stay away. I chose to see for myself rather than not to see. I chose to speak to you rather than to say nothing.
This is not to say that I am here to deliver a political message. To make judgments about right and wrong is one of the novelist's most important duties, of course.
It is left to each writer, however, to decide upon the form in which he or she will convey those judgments to others. I myself prefer to transform them into stories - stories that tend toward the surreal. Which is why I do not intend to stand before you today delivering a direct political message.
Please do, however, allow me to deliver one very personal message. It is something that I always keep in mind while I am writing fiction. I have never gone so far as to write it on a piece of paper and paste it to the wall: Rather, it is carved into the wall of my mind, and it goes something like this:
"Between a high, solid wall and an egg that breaks against it, I will always stand on the side of the egg."
Yes, no matter how right the wall may be and how wrong the egg, I will stand with the egg. Someone else will have to decide what is right and what is wrong; perhaps time or history will decide. If there were a novelist who, for whatever reason, wrote works standing with the wall, of what value would such works be?
What is the meaning of this metaphor? In some cases, it is all too simple and clear. Bombers and tanks and rockets and white phosphorus shells are that high, solid wall. The eggs are the unarmed civilians who are crushed and burned and shot by them. This is one meaning of the metaphor.
This is not all, though. It carries a deeper meaning. Think of it this way. Each of us is, more or less, an egg. Each of us is a unique, irreplaceable soul enclosed in a fragile shell. This is true of me, and it is true of each of you. And each of us, to a greater or lesser degree, is confronting a high, solid wall. The wall has a name: It is The System. The System is supposed to protect us, but sometimes it takes on a life of its own, and then it begins to kill us and cause us to kill others - coldly, efficiently, systematically.
I have only one reason to write novels, and that is to bring the dignity of the individual soul to the surface and shine a light upon it. The purpose of a story is to sound an alarm, to keep a light trained on The System in order to prevent it from tangling our souls in its web and demeaning them. I fully believe it is the novelist's job to keep trying to clarify the uniqueness of each individual soul by writing stories - stories of life and death, stories of love, stories that make people cry and quake with fear and shake with laughter. This is why we go on, day after day, concocting fictions with utter seriousness.
My father died last year at the age of 90. He was a retired teacher and a part-time Buddhist priest. When he was in graduate school, he was drafted into the army and sent to fight in China. As a child born after the war, I used to see him every morning before breakfast offering up long, deeply-felt prayers at the Buddhist altar in our house. One time I asked him why he did this, and he told me he was praying for the people who had died in the war.
He was praying for all the people who died, he said, both ally and enemy alike. Staring at his back as he knelt at the altar, I seemed to feel the shadow of death hovering around him.
My father died, and with him he took his memories, memories that I can never know. But the presence of death that lurked about him remains in my own memory. It is one of the few things I carry on from him, and one of the most important.
I have only one thing I hope to convey to you today. We are all human beings, individuals transcending nationality and race and religion, fragile eggs faced with a solid wall called The System. To all appearances, we have no hope of winning. The wall is too high, too strong - and too cold. If we have any hope of victory at all, it will have to come from our believing in the utter uniqueness and irreplaceability of our own and others' souls and from the warmth we gain by joining souls together.
Take a moment to think about this. Each of us possesses a tangible, living soul. The System has no such thing. We must not allow The System to exploit us. We must not allow The System to take on a life of its own. The System did not make us: We made The System.
That is all I have to say to you.
I am grateful to have been awarded the Jerusalem Prize. I am grateful that my books are being read by people in many parts of the world. And I am glad to have had the opportunity to speak to you here today.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1064909.html
表面的な報道が多かったので、原文に近いと思われるものを探してみた。
-------------
Always on the side of the egg
By Haruki Murakami
Feb 15, 2009
I have come to Jerusalem today as a novelist, which is to say as a professional spinner of lies.
Of course, novelists are not the only ones who tell lies. Politicians do it, too, as we all know. Diplomats and military men tell their own kinds of lies on occasion, as do used car salesmen, butchers and builders. The lies of novelists differ from others, however, in that no one criticizes the novelist as immoral for telling them. Indeed, the bigger and better his lies and the more ingeniously he creates them, the more he is likely to be praised by the public and the critics. Why should that be?
My answer would be this: Namely, that by telling skillful lies - which is to say, by making up fictions that appear to be true - the novelist can bring a truth out to a new location and shine a new light on it. In most cases, it is virtually impossible to grasp a truth in its original form and depict it accurately. This is why we try to grab its tail by luring the truth from its hiding place, transferring it to a fictional location, and replacing it with a fictional form. In order to accomplish this, however, we first have to clarify where the truth lies within us. This is an important qualification for making up good lies.
Today, however, I have no intention of lying. I will try to be as honest as I can. There are a few days in the year when I do not engage in telling lies, and today happens to be one of them.
So let me tell you the truth. A fair number of people advised me not to come here to accept the Jerusalem Prize. Some even warned me they would instigate a boycott of my books if I came.
The reason for this, of course, was the fierce battle that was raging in Gaza. The UN reported that more than a thousand people had lost their lives in the blockaded Gaza City, many of them unarmed citizens - children and old people.
Any number of times after receiving notice of the award, I asked myself whether traveling to Israel at a time like this and accepting a literary prize was the proper thing to do, whether this would create the impression that I supported one side in the conflict, that I endorsed the policies of a nation that chose to unleash its overwhelming military power. This is an impression, of course, that I would not wish to give. I do not approve of any war, and I do not support any nation. Neither, of course, do I wish to see my books subjected to a boycott.
Finally, however, after careful consideration, I made up my mind to come here. One reason for my decision was that all too many people advised me not to do it. Perhaps, like many other novelists, I tend to do the exact opposite of what I am told. If people are telling me - and especially if they are warning me - "don't go there," "don't do that," I tend to want to "go there" and "do that." It's in my nature, you might say, as a novelist. Novelists are a special breed. They cannot genuinely trust anything they have not seen with their own eyes or touched with their own hands.
And that is why I am here. I chose to come here rather than stay away. I chose to see for myself rather than not to see. I chose to speak to you rather than to say nothing.
This is not to say that I am here to deliver a political message. To make judgments about right and wrong is one of the novelist's most important duties, of course.
It is left to each writer, however, to decide upon the form in which he or she will convey those judgments to others. I myself prefer to transform them into stories - stories that tend toward the surreal. Which is why I do not intend to stand before you today delivering a direct political message.
Please do, however, allow me to deliver one very personal message. It is something that I always keep in mind while I am writing fiction. I have never gone so far as to write it on a piece of paper and paste it to the wall: Rather, it is carved into the wall of my mind, and it goes something like this:
"Between a high, solid wall and an egg that breaks against it, I will always stand on the side of the egg."
Yes, no matter how right the wall may be and how wrong the egg, I will stand with the egg. Someone else will have to decide what is right and what is wrong; perhaps time or history will decide. If there were a novelist who, for whatever reason, wrote works standing with the wall, of what value would such works be?
What is the meaning of this metaphor? In some cases, it is all too simple and clear. Bombers and tanks and rockets and white phosphorus shells are that high, solid wall. The eggs are the unarmed civilians who are crushed and burned and shot by them. This is one meaning of the metaphor.
This is not all, though. It carries a deeper meaning. Think of it this way. Each of us is, more or less, an egg. Each of us is a unique, irreplaceable soul enclosed in a fragile shell. This is true of me, and it is true of each of you. And each of us, to a greater or lesser degree, is confronting a high, solid wall. The wall has a name: It is The System. The System is supposed to protect us, but sometimes it takes on a life of its own, and then it begins to kill us and cause us to kill others - coldly, efficiently, systematically.
I have only one reason to write novels, and that is to bring the dignity of the individual soul to the surface and shine a light upon it. The purpose of a story is to sound an alarm, to keep a light trained on The System in order to prevent it from tangling our souls in its web and demeaning them. I fully believe it is the novelist's job to keep trying to clarify the uniqueness of each individual soul by writing stories - stories of life and death, stories of love, stories that make people cry and quake with fear and shake with laughter. This is why we go on, day after day, concocting fictions with utter seriousness.
My father died last year at the age of 90. He was a retired teacher and a part-time Buddhist priest. When he was in graduate school, he was drafted into the army and sent to fight in China. As a child born after the war, I used to see him every morning before breakfast offering up long, deeply-felt prayers at the Buddhist altar in our house. One time I asked him why he did this, and he told me he was praying for the people who had died in the war.
He was praying for all the people who died, he said, both ally and enemy alike. Staring at his back as he knelt at the altar, I seemed to feel the shadow of death hovering around him.
My father died, and with him he took his memories, memories that I can never know. But the presence of death that lurked about him remains in my own memory. It is one of the few things I carry on from him, and one of the most important.
I have only one thing I hope to convey to you today. We are all human beings, individuals transcending nationality and race and religion, fragile eggs faced with a solid wall called The System. To all appearances, we have no hope of winning. The wall is too high, too strong - and too cold. If we have any hope of victory at all, it will have to come from our believing in the utter uniqueness and irreplaceability of our own and others' souls and from the warmth we gain by joining souls together.
Take a moment to think about this. Each of us possesses a tangible, living soul. The System has no such thing. We must not allow The System to exploit us. We must not allow The System to take on a life of its own. The System did not make us: We made The System.
That is all I have to say to you.
I am grateful to have been awarded the Jerusalem Prize. I am grateful that my books are being read by people in many parts of the world. And I am glad to have had the opportunity to speak to you here today.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1064909.html
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